neither can citizens who get together and pass resolutions about the government take up any matter intelligently, unless they have provided themselves with some agency by means of which the technical problem may be studied. Having participated in the work of many such committees, having become conscious of the ignorance with which subjects of public concern are approached and having come to know the damage which is often done to a good cause by unintelligent citizen action; the conclusion was reached by a few men in New York that citizenship could not hope to become effective in the exercise of its sovereign powers until citizen duty and governmental responsibility should become subjects of inquiry; until organized means should be provided for knowing definitely what are the needs of the community which should be served by the government; what the government is doing to meet these ends; what is its organization; what the conditions surrounding its personnel; what the technical processes employed; what the results being obtained. In other words, it was thought that as a matter of duty, citizenship should provide for itself the same kind of an organization for house-cleaning as did the life insurance companies at the time they were under legislative investigation. Every citizen of the United States has a right of access to public records. Every citizen, therefore, has a right to inform himself and to use the information obtained from records for the information of his fellows. But the trouble is this: that even though a particular citizen has free access and gives all of his time to the consideration of questions of citizen duty, the government is so highly complex in organization and technical in requirements that he will do well if he comes to understand one of its problems in such manner that he can think about it with intelligence. This is a condition which must be faced. If citizenship is to be effective, citizens must use their power of independent inquiry; but they must organize for using it. It has been upon such a theory that bureaus of municipal research have been organized and supported. The fundamental or charter rights of such organizations are: 1. The right of access to such records. 3. The duty which a citizen organization has to support the hands of the officer, to stand back of the man who wishes to do what is right, and in front of the man who wishes to do what is wrong. The government agent should be called upon to produce such information as may be currently or regularly reported. He should be called upon to furnish this not only to the executive officer and to the legislature, but also to the citizen; the administration should be called upon to lay before the legislature and the people a definite program to be financed, and the legislature should be held responsible for the way in which it acts on such a program. This information should be supplemented by statements of fact showing records of performance and results which may be appraised in terms of standards based on concepts of welfare. Alongside of an official agency should be an agency of citizenship which will be equipped for going into each technical subject concerning which detail data may be desired, and which will enable the citizen body, without partizan cant or the warp of private interest, to sit in judgment on the acts of their trustees who have been appointed or elected to places of official responsibility. This to my mind is the answer to the question, "What steps should be taken to put information into the hands of executives and into the hands of the people?" |